


A Hiatus

by themegalosaurus



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Beards (Facial Hair), Domestic, Gardens & Gardening, Gen, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-25 03:27:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12027120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themegalosaurus/pseuds/themegalosaurus
Summary: Summer is quiet, hunting-wise, and Sam and Dean find some space to breathe.





	A Hiatus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [quickreaver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quickreaver/gifts).



> I wrote this for Summergen 2017 for quickreaver's prompt: 'slice of life; downtime, between hunts'. It's less substantial than my previous Summergen fics have been (sorry, Cris!) but I've had a terrible time writing anything lately so I decided to aim for small and completely realised rather than long and rushed!

Dean doesn't notice Sam's beard growing in until he looks up one morning and double-takes at the mountain man entering the kitchen.  
  
"Dude," he says, and Sam, soft in long-sleeved T-shirt and sweatpants, blinks at him through a halo of tousled hair. Come to think of it, that's longer than normal too, curling at the nape of his neck where it's usually disciplined into something at least approximating order just under his ears.  
  
"You going for some kind of Chewbacca deal?" Dean asks, and Sam rubs a hand over his jaw, back up through his hair which ends up sticking up worse than ever.  
  
"Just don't see the need to cut it right now," he says. "I only do it for the Fed outfits, anyway, and we haven't had a proper case in forever." Then he shuffles over to the coffee machine and makes himself a fancy latte with one of the bottles of syrup that have appeared on the counter in the last few weeks.   
  
"I'm pretty sure you've been a good few inches off an FBI regulation cut for the past five years," says Dean. Sam shrugs broad shoulders and Dean looks down at his black coffee, sniffing enviously and surreptitiously at the caramel-vanilla scent that wafts in his direction from Sam's girly turquoise eco-mug. It's true that they haven't caught a hunt in a little while. It might be something to do with the Brits; they got so used to being drip-fed leads via text message that he and Sam have gotten lazy on their usual routine of scouring the web for whatever weird stuff might be happening in their line. Add to that, it's summer, and things always just seem to die down a little this time of year. It's like payback for the enormous shit-show that kicks off every spring.  
  
Later that morning, making a grocery run in the 90-degree Kansas heat, Dean can understand why the creepies of the American Midwest, at least, might choose to lie dormant for a few weeks every year. The car has air conditioning but it's old and not good for much, and the black paint and leather interior combine to turn his baby into a sweatbox that has him gasping for the cooler as soon as he hits the gas station on the outskirts of town. He buries his face amongst the chill plastic bottles of soda before reaching in further to swipe the coldest Coke he can find from the back of the shelf. Then he grabs an armful of miscellaneous chips and candy, and three boxes of Popsicles from the freezer by the door.  
  
When he gets home he stashes the groceries and is disconcerted to find that Sam isn't in the library, or in his bedroom, or in any of the easily accessible rooms downstairs. Dean is just getting concerned when his phone buzzes with a message. "Did I hear the car? I'm outside. Up the back stairs." Dean bristles at the implied instruction before realising that he has nothing better to do, grabbing a beer for both of them, and heading out.  
  
He finds Sam in the centre of a cleared area of ground, hidden from the view of passers-by by virtue of its location in the middle of the disused power station next to their home. Brown brick walls climb up enormous in every direction, the huge span of earth between them covered mostly with nettles and weeds. Dean's only been up here once before, waded through thorns into the open vault of the building and retreated rapidly back down again when he realised it housed nothing but ragged bushes and bits of uncleared factory junk. Sam, though, must have been working on this project for a long time. He's dug out a large, rectangular plot against one of the walls, from which tendrils of green curl up against the brickwork, clinging into the crevices. Neat rows of small plants march out in rows across the earth, right up to the edges of the patch.   
  
Evidently, the need for space is such that Sam's decided to expand; Dean's dumbass brother has chosen as his occupation on this hot summer day the insanely unsuitable task of breaking up the next patch of the concrete floor. Just as Dean emerges out into the sunlight, Sam brings a huge heavy mallet down onto the ground, sending dusty powder spraying up in every direction. He staggers backward, drops the mallet and wipes a sweaty forearm over his face.  
  
"Beer," says Dean, offering a bottle damp with condensation. Sam gawps at him like he's fricking God's heavenly messenger before taking the beer in a blistered hand and downing what looks like three-quarters of the bottle.  
  
"Gardening," Dean says, half a question. Gardening Winchester-style, with a sledgehammer and steel-toed boots.  
  
"Yeah," says Sam. He indicates the vines presently sunning themselves against the brick. "Tomatoes are coming out, look." He's not wrong. There are plump red cheeks peeking from under the leaves, all over the wall. "I thought we could jar them up for pasta sauce or something."  
  
"Sure," says Dean. He looks at the wall, assessing. There are a  _lot_  of tomatoes.  
  
"I wasn't sure if they'd take," Sam says. "But."  
  
"Yeah," says Dean. He reaches out and snags the nearest tomato, holds it poised for a moment between his two fingers before he pops it into his mouth and bites into it, where it bursts wet and vivid over his tongue. Pasta sauce is always useful, he supposes.  
  
He looks at Sam again. It's not just the beard and the unkempt hair that make his brother look wilder than usual. Sam's built up a tan through these days outside, is golden brown where he's too often library-pallid from hibernating with only the glow of a laptop to sustain him, his arms swelling bronzed and sledgehammer-strong. It's also the clothes. Rather than the usual layers of plaid or his neat Fed suit, Sam is wearing an old shirt, a scruffy tee with a hole along one side of the collar that he (naturally) has sweat right through. He smells terrible.

For some reason, the whole disgusting spectacle makes Dean feel great.  
  
"You want a popsicle?" he says, and Sam's eyes light up. "Back in a second."  
  
They sit straight-legged on the baking concrete and eat the popsicles, looking up through the ragged edges of the factory's rafters to the bright blue Kansas sky. A bird of prey wheels overhead, something big - an eagle, maybe - and suddenly Dean's jolted into a memory of another summer, a motel in the middle of the Arizona desert with an outdoor pool and the sky open like this above them, Dad gone and he and Sam the only people for miles around, except for the worn-out middle-aged woman who ran the place. Dean had done bombs into the deep end of the pool and Sam had ploughed earnestly up and down, swimming laps, his chest and shoulders just starting to fill out into adolescence. Dad had been on some hunt that he hadn't thought Dean ready for (Dean wonders now if it was a siren, something like that). School had been out. Doubtless whatever followed after had been the usual terrifying horror show, but thinking back to that moment what Dean remembers is the quiet and the unusual sense of freedom, of peace.  
  
"We could build a pool out here," he says. Sam raises his eyebrows, looks around.  
  
"It's big enough, I guess." He glances down at the hammer. "Don't much fancy digging that out by hand."  
  
"Yeah." They'd need some machinery, of course, but that could be done. This is farm country. Dean could source a digger, put on dungarees and a southern accent and talk nonsense about crops. No reason why not.  
  
"You got anything else fit to eat?" he asks Sam, swiping another tomato.  
  
Sam has some zucchini bristling under broad leaves at the back of the plot, so they yank them free and make a garlicky, buttery pasta dish for dinner. After, Dean comes back up outside, notionally to measure out for his pool-in-progress but really to relish the stars scattered overhead across the huge, black-purple sky. Sam comes up with a glass of whiskey and they sit in the dark together, the herby scent of the vegetable patch floating exotic in the air around.   
  
"Summer vacation," Dean says, and Sam says, rapid and a little uncertain, "Breathing space." He smiles at Dean, a quick flash of white teeth in the darkness.  
  
"Yeah," says Dean.  
  
Dean sticks a message on a local small ads site, looking to borrow a digger. He marks out ground across the other side of the space to where Sam has his vegetable patch, deciding how big they need to make their pool. He gets the other sledgehammer and starts breaking up the concrete, acquires a pretty thick tan of his own, and develops a matching beard (which, okay, takes a little longer to grow in than Sam's). He's sleeping better than he has done in years, worn out with physical work and the peculiar tiredness of long days in the sun.  
  
It's August third when Sam knocks on his door in the morning and sticks his head into the room. He's clean shaven, his cheeks oddly pale against the tan band of skin across his eyes and nose.  
  
"Sorry, man," Sam says. "Caught a job up in Wisconsin. Djinn."  
  
"All right," says Dean. He rubs his hands over his face, beard prickling under his palms. That'll have to go. The Fed threads are hanging neatly in his wardrobe, a little musty after their long summer of disuse. A lifetime of training means his weapons kit is ready and waiting. He tugs it all out, the guns, the knives, the ammo, and fights down the knot of regret, reluctance, whatever it is that is weighing down his stomach. "Come on," he says to himself in the mirror, shaving away the evidence of the weeks off work. His old self stares back at him. Dean feels his shoulders sag.   
  
As the car pulls out onto the highway, the sky rattles thunder. A fat drop of rain hits the windshield. Sam wrinkles his nose and looks up into the darkening clouds. "Good for the garden," he says. Then he pulls a Tupperware out of nowhere. The scent of fresh-picked tomatoes fills the car. Dean's stomach begins to unclench.  
  
He looks over at his brother. "You still haven't cut your hair."  
  
Sam grins at him. "Eh, it's not exactly regulation anyway."  
  
"Yeah, okay." Dean says. He grabs for the Tupperware box. "Give me one of those."

**Author's Note:**

> Your comments are always gratefully received...


End file.
